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| A CHANGING MEXICO | |
 July 15, 1997 
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CHARLES KRAUSE: There's general agreement in Mexico and in the United States that Mexico's July 6th election was a watershed in the country's political development. After nearly 70 years in power, the country's autocratic ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, also known as the PRI, was soundly defeated. For the first time, the PRI lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, which means that for the first time Mexico's president -- currently Ernesto Zedillo -- will be forced to negotiate with the opposition, as in other democratic countries, if he hopes to govern. At the state level, the PRI also lost two more governorships --bringing opposition politicians to power in six of Mexico's thirty-one states. That's six more states than the opposition controlled just a decade ago. And, perhaps most significantly, the PRI has now lost control of Mexico City -- the sprawling metropolis that's Mexico's economic and political capital. For the first time in 50 years, the capital has an elected mayor: he's Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a center leftist whose victory reflects Mexico's new commitment to free, fair, and honest elections. But it also signals a significant challenge to the PRI and, possibly, to the current government's free market economic policies. Cardenas is the son of one of Mexico's most beloved presidents, Lazaro Cardenas, a founder of the PRI who nationalized Mexico's oil industry in 1938. At the time, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was just a child in Los Pinos, the presidential palace. But as an adult in 1987, Cardenas broke with the party his father had founded, in part because he objected to the government's economic program, which called for dismantling the highly centralized, state-controlled economic system his father had helped create. In 1988 and again in 1994, Cardenas ran for president. On the campaign trail he accused the PRI of corruption, of being undemocratic, and of having lost touch with the poor, who make up the vast majority of Mexico's 90 million people. Three years ago, we interviewed him as he campaigned through Michoacan, his home state in central Mexico.
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CUAUHTEMOC CARDENAS: I've been going all around the country, talking with many people, and people are very angry with the government, because the government has been stealing elections, because living standards have been dropping, because wages are lower and lower, because there's more unemployment, so people find that there is no real action from the government to improve living standards or create jobs, etc. CHARLES KRAUSE: In 1994, Cardenas campaigned against a background of violence: A guerrilla uprising in the Southern Mexican state of Chiapas, and two political assassinations, including the murder of his principal opponent, PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. Fearful of instability, Mexico's voters voted for what they knew: the PRI and its substitute candidate, Ernesto Zedillo. This year, Cardenas made a strong comeback, propelled by three years of severe economic crisis, allegations of widespread government corruption, and growing concern even among average Mexicans of the evident growing power of Mexico's drug cartels. So far, the fact that the PRI allowed Cardenas and other opposition parties and candidates to win has been hailed as a positive turning point for Mexico. Mexico city's left-of-center daily newspaper La Jornada said of the July 6 election: "At last we are arriving at democracy." The centrist paper Excelsior credited President Zedillo, the titular head of the PRI, with election reforms that resulted in this year's "exemplary election" and the government-controlled El Nacional called for "tolerance and civilized coexistence -- a new era," the paper said. Meanwhile, politicians from all parties have their eyes cast to Mexico's next presidential election in the year 2000. That's when Cardenas is once again expected to try to take the country's most powerful office from the PRI. |
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